8. Sweets for the Sweet

Chapter 8 Sweets for the Sweet My mom always goes grocery shopping on Saturday. And she always tries to get me to come along. "A.J., let's go grocery shopping," she said. "No thanks." "Come on, A.J.," she said. "I'll let you push the cart." "Oh, man, I want to watch TV, Mom." "I'll buy you a treat," my mom said. "Sweets for the sweet!" A treat! The last time I tasted anything sweet, it was that Twinkie that Ms. Leakey tried to grab out of my mouth. I hadn't had candy or cookies in so long, I hardly remembered what they tasted like. "Let's go!" I told my mom.

We drove to the supermarket. My mom parked the car and got out her shopping list and coupons. I went to get a cart and pushed it through the magic doors that open all by themselves. Those doors are cool. "Can I get my treat now, Mom?" I asked. "Not yet," she told me. "First we have to do our shopping." Bummer in the summer! Shopping is way overrated. I don't know if you ever went grocery shopping with your mom or dad, but it is the most boring thing in the history of the world. We had to go up and down every aisle of the supermarket. I thought I was gonna die. All I wanted was my treat. When my mom buys a melon, she acts like she's buying a house. She has to feel each melon. She has to smell each melon. Then she has to shake each melon and

listen to it. What is her problem? "It's just a melon!" I said. "They're all the same." "I have to find the perfect melon," she said. I hate melon. Finally, after a million hundred hours, she found the perfect melon. We were finished grocery shopping. "So, what treat do you want, A.J.?" my mom asked. I had been thinking about it the whole time we were shopping. At first I wanted an ice-cream pop. But I decided that an ice- cream pop wouldn't last very long. Then I wanted a Devil Dog. But they come in boxes of eight, and I knew my mom would say I could only get one treat. Then I saw something at the end of the candy aisle. It was a giant box filled to the

brim with candy. Just about every kind of candy in the world was in there. I led my mom over to it. "Okay, you can have one treat, A.J.," my mom said. "Just one. I'll get in line. You choose your treat and meet me in the checkout line." I looked over the candy: Milky Way, AirHeads, Mars bars, Twix, Kit Kat, Chunky, mr. Goodbar, York Peppermint Patties, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Mike and Ike, Atomic FireBall, JuJu Fish, Sour Neon Worms, Goobers, Laffy Taffy, Nerds, Sugar Daddy, Baby Ruth, Snickers, Kisses, M & M's (plain and peanut), gummi bears, Dots, Junior Mints, Milk Duds, Good & Plenty, Whoppers, Twizzlers, Dum Dum, Skittles, Butterfinger, Starburst, Crunch, Jolly Rancher, Sweet Pops, Tootsie Roll…. I couldn't decide which one I wanted.

Everything looked so good. I wanted them all. I thought and thought and thought until my brain was about to explode. Finally, I decided to get a 3 Musketeers bar. I leaned all the way over. I reached out to pick up the 3 Musketeers bar. I picked up the 3 Musketeers bar. And you'll never believe in a million hundred years what happened next. A hand came out from under all that candy! It grabbed my hand! "Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!" I screamed. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen in my life! It was like one of those movies where a zombie hand pops out of a grave in the middle of the night.

But then something even scarier happened. A person was attached to the hand! The person came up from under the